LINNAEUS GENESIS
God is existence.
In God’s image are beetles,
amoebas, and men.
APPLE BLUES
Look at me: bold, fat as an apple.
Here I am, bald, fat as an apple.
But don’t value goods just by their wrapper.
Old as your father, that’s what you said.
“You’re old’s my father,” is what you said.
But that’s no bother, not decrepit yet.
May look like a wolf, pitted and ugly.
Big bad old wolf, grizzled and ugly.
Feed me love enough, tame as a puppy.
You think I’m a shit, I make your garden grow.
I may be a shit, but I make your garden grow.
When you need a prick, let me be your rose.
(Lean me against your marrow like a giant midget jumbo shrimp. Hold my poor minute against all infinity like any other parasol you’d prop against a hurricane. A gossamer-armored middleaged scholar in swimming trunks, let my steady frailty hold the frailty of your own, let my cardboard walls withstand the world’s assault.)
Look at me: bold, fat as an apple.
Look at me, bald just like an apple.
Don’t value the goods just by their wrapper.
If you break your compass, I am true north.
You lose direction, here I am, true north.
And when you end your wanders I’m fire in your hearth.
If I’m silent, don’t have much to say.
I’m kind of silent, not a lot to say.
Just like my violence, words left yesterday.
Horny old bastard, last grape on the vine.
Horny old bastard, the end of the line.
Wrinkled and blasted grape a-makes the sweetest wine.
TANTRIC ALCHEMY
a.
LUNAR ILLUMINATI
Moonlight albedos
us. We together ourselves,
purified by night.
b.
EROTIC CONIUNCTIO
Our oneness complete,
I applaud stiff rubedo.
The coming of the dawn.
c
DIURNAL REPAIR
Sun’s citrinitas
fixes the constituents
nigredo broke down.
SALLY
A thaw wind stole softened in
and walked its shadow down the wall,
unedged this heart of flint.
Yes, this hunchback which I am
exhibits its Olympic plaque
like one more oriflamme.
You renew dry blooms like a spring.
The I-as-eunuch whom you know
has fixed his battering
ram, dug his sword from the mould.
This dragon hiding in my skin
must now expose his gold.
Dead still limbs tortured to bud.
At last this dark tyrant deposed.
Hurt earth unfroze to mud.
Freezing night can’t sleep so long
as flowers burst in firework
and larks upon the spring.
Mountains take off robes of snow
and rivers caps of ice
as spring’s wind begins to blow.
TIDAL
I scavenge driftwood,
shells, and pebbles from the beach.
The ocean beyonds.